Hunter and Back Again
by HitmanPAC
Summary: Everyone's gotta grow up, even Laharl. But sometimes one has to be thrust out of the safe cradle they were raised in and forced into the wilderness. Only then will they become the person they were meant to be. Except Etna; she'll always be flat.


As always, it was all the prinnie's fault.

Somehow, Etna had gotten tired of torturing the prinnies for her own amusement. As shocking as this development was, she had also apparently had had enough of Laharl stealing her sweets. Why, Laharl had no clue; she obviously wasn't trying to hide them hard enough. Besides, what was hers was his. Duh.

Anyway, after throwing a fit over Laharl's latest aquisition - some kind of sugarury pastry, in the shape of a ridged stick, called a churly or something - Etna had declared that she was taking a vacation to the human world. Normally, this wouldn't be much of a problem, as time in the human world moved 100 times faster than in the Netherworld, and a hundred day vacation would be over in a single day, but the prinnies had decided to rummage around in Etna's room as soon as she had left and found Flonne's old angel outfit (He _wasn't_ asking. He _wasn't_).

Flonne had decided that now was as good a time as any to finish up her angel trainee test, and immediately set off for Celestia. This left Laharl alone with the Prinnies - well, there were his father's old vassals as well, but trying to interact with them was like trying to teach a bunch of six year olds math: nothing got accomplished, they drew crude pictures all over your throne when your back was turned, and you were left taking the blame for someone crapping on the carpet. And let's not even mention the Rosencrantz employees; if they're not emptying your pockets with their ridiculous prices, they're doing it literally when your back is turned.

Anyway, Laharl had been experimenting to figure out why Etna normally took such pleasure in torturing the prinnies when he found an envelope addressed to him in his room. Inside was, of all things, a love letter from a prinnie. Curious as to where this was going to go, and eager to see the look on the prinnie's face when he cruelly rejected her (take that, Flonne!), he went to the Sea of Gehenna like the letter had asked.

Well, he tried to, anyway. When he stepped through the portal the strangely grinning gatekeeper had set up, he found himself not, as he had been expecting, the Sea of Gehenna, but in the human world.

On an airplane.

In flight.

Over the ocean.

In Economy!

It was the last bit that was the last straw. Him, the Overlord, in Economy! It was unacceptable - Unbelievable, even, if he wasn't experiencing it firsthand!

He'd called the stewardess, but she'd just apologized and said there was nothing she could do mid-flight. Even threatening to blow the plane up hadn't gotten him anywhere; she'd just asked where his parents were.

He'd told her his parents were dead. That shut her right up, but it didn't get him out of Economy. When he got back to t he Netherworld, he was going to do terrible, terrible things to the prinnie that had confessed her love to him. Like make her his permanent Sweet-stealer. Arranging for Etna to punish the prinnie would probably be better than anything he himself could arrange.

As he was giggl-cackling to himself, he was suddenly brought back to reality when the fat slob next to him spilled his glass of wine _all over his scarf!_

That was _it!_

"Human!"

The fat slob turned his piggish eyes towards the great Overlord beside him and grunted. "Huh. Whoops." Then he smirked. "Sucks to be you."

Laharl found himself nearly unable to speak at this, this _creature's_ audacity! Humans deserved at least a modicum of respect for their race's ability to take on their superiors and survive to tell the tale, but the scum in front of him looked more like an orc than a human! And he smelled worse, too.

"Human," Laharl ground out, trying to avoid turning his armrests into scrap, "I will give you one more chance to apologize. Do so, and I will tear off your limbs, but leave you alive."

The pig-man's sneer grew. "Or what, brat? You gonna crap your diapers and cry?"

As you can see, it really wasnt his fault that incinerating the fool tore a hole in the plane and sent it crashing into the ocean. He was absolutely justified in his actions, and the safety placard had never mentioned anything about the plane being so fragile.

Clinging onto a piece of flotsam, Laharl watched the plane sink beneath the waves. He appeared to be the only one who had survived; well, as the foolish pig-man had said, 'sucks to be you.' Or in this case, them. Turning his attention back to the flotsam keeping him afloat, Laharl gripped it tighter. He hoped he'd reach land soon; he had to pee rather badly, and he didn't want to pollute the ocean anymore than he had by dumping so many humans into it.

Unfortunately, day had turned into night by the time he'd been washed onto an island, and he'd been whispering to himself the mantra his father had taught him as a child ('Keep it up ~ Suck it in ~ Or you'll grow up ~ With naught but a pin ~') for what seemed like ages. As soon as he felt sand beneath his now bare feet, he stumbeled forward, spied some sort of log lying on the beach in front of him, pulled down his pants and let loose. "Ahhhh..."

There was a groaning sound, and Laharl squinted down at the log he was aiming at. "Etna?"

"Prince?"

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of waves on the shore and the trickle of Laharl releasing himself, before a shocked and outrage voice rose from the 'log' beneath him.

"Are, are you _peeing_ on me?"

Another moment of silence.

"...Whoops?"

He didn't stop, though. in retrospect, he probably should have, but the sound of the waves made it seem very hard.

So, totally not his fault.

* * *

Etna couldn't _believe_ her luck!

Her vacation had been going smoothely enough for the first few weeks - mere hours back in the Netherworld, but a totally satisfying stress relief session for her. Of course, the humans hadn't appreciated her taking her stress out on the idiots who made comments about how short she was, or the real idiots who commented on how _small_ she was - not to mention the ones that mistook her for a boy and said her spear was 'compensating for something.'

So, after being tossed out of her third country (humans were so touchy), she decided that what she needed was a nice relaxing break from annoying idiots, and the only way to do this was to go to an isolated, uninhabited island for the rest of her break. She'd hired transport to a perfect, out of the way island, arranged for them to come back in a couple of months, and proceeded to start in on her solitude.

Then Laharl had stumbled onto her on her first night sleeping on the beach, and proceeded to pee on her.

_Pee on her_.

This deserved reiteration. _He had urinated on her_. It seemed like everytime she'd gotten used to the depths of immaturity her prince would reach, he'd go out of his way to prove that, no, he could be worse. A _lot_ worse, as this newest stunt had proved.

She'd immediately attempted to kill him with her spear, as he ran away (lacking weapons of his own, the moron), spouting his usual high-brow nonsense and trying to avoid the blame for his own idiocy like usual.

It was just too much. She'd left the Netherworld to get a break from this kind of nonsense, and he comes, hunts her down somehow, and _pees_ on her. She couldn't handle it. She snapped.

And started crying.

Apparently Laharl wasn't able to handle crying girls - no surprise there, as it almost never happened in the Netherworld - but his lackluster attempts to calm her down without accepting any blame for his actions only made things worse. She spent the next hour wailing at the top of her voice, alternatively flailing her spear around hysterically to try and drive him off and burrowing herself in the sand to hide from her prince's pathetic attempts to apologize to her without actually apologizing.

Finally, after she'd had what was probably the second good cry in her life, Etna cleaned herself up (Laharl having long since retreated into the light jungle on the island), gathered her willpower, and stomped off to get some answers.

After wringing some information from the unrepetant brat, she sat down and ground her knuckles into her temples trying to figure out what to do. The goal was simple: get rid of Laharl. She needed this vacation, now more than ever, and having Laharl around would make it no better than being back in the Netherworld - worse, even, as he didn't have any responsibilities to keep him occupied, and no patsies to be distracted by.

However, she didn't really have many options. Her transport was only coming back at the end of her vacation, and she wasn't waiting that long. She could toss him in the ocean, but fact of the matter was he was stronger than her, and wouldn't hesitate to prove it and steal all her food for himself if she provoked him. She had to find a way to get him to go away on his own, preferably back to the Netherworld...

Eureka!

* * *

"So," Laharl said conversationally, "What does this do, exactly?"

He was still a little freaked out by Etna's breakdown, and his tone was actually polite. He'd been mocking Etna for what seemed like forever, but he'd never had her react like this. If he went too far, he just expected her to get angry, and at best swear to leave like she had before. That, he could deal with; it was exactly to kind of response he expected from his second command, the demon who had sworn to see him become Overlord or kill him and do it herself. But crying? Etna? Not part of the script. Sure, he might have been a little out of line there, but it wasn't like he had done it _deliberately_ or anything. He'd been holding it for hours, after all, _anyone_ would have been desperate...

He was getting distracted. Etna was now back to normal - at least, she appeared to be - and was trying to explain how she was going to get him home. He had to at least _appear _to be listening.

"... and that's how this summoning circle is going to get you back in the Netherworld, where that *snicker* _cute_ _prinny_ still has to confess to you."

Right, he'd grasped the important bits - circle, home - and decided to ignore her humor at someone falling in love with him. It was totally normal, he was a - what did Flonne's magazines call him? Ah, right, a 'hot bishie'. "Alright then," he stated imperiously. "Get on with it and send me home!"

Etna sighed. "You didn't listen to a word I said, did you?"

Technically, yes he did. He knew better than to discuss technicalities with women, though. "I understood perfectly! Finish up the circle and get me home so I can deal with my fan!"

Snickering once more, Etna finished the last inward facing spike on the summoning circle. "Fine, fine, prince. don't get your panties in a bunch. It's all done. Now, step inside and wait while I make the apprpriate sacrifice."

Laharl stepped forward regally, his scarf floating in the wind behind him (still stained with wine, despite his dunk in the sea. Damnit, that was his favorite scarf!), and raised an eyebrow as Etna pulled a fish out of nowhere and disembowled it on the edge of the circle. "Where did you say you learned this kind of magic from, again?"

Etna wave his concerns off. "The Mages are always scribbling weird stuff in the bathroom stalls. It's not that hard to piece it together."

He gave her an incredulous look as the circle began to glow. "Are you saying you learned how to do this from _bathroom scribbles__!_"

The circle was reaching critical brightness. "Relax, prince. It'll work, you'll -"

There was a large explosion, a massive poof of smoke, and suddenly instead of Laharl standing inside the circle there was a massive, blue-scaled dragon standing imperiously above Etna. About a second later, Laharl hit the ground, the height of the dragon that had appeared beneath him causing his fall to gather quite a bit of speed.

Coughing up sand, Laharl turned to Etna as the dragon, confused and angry, roared an elemental summons, creating a tsunami infused with the magical powers that had brought it there.

"Consider your pay docked and your vacation terminated," he stated, irritated.

Then the tsunami swallowed them up, and took them away.

* * *

When she woke up, Etna was only moderately surprised to see a large lizard, with very sharp teeth, gnawing on her boot. It wasn't having much luck - not mentioning the strength of the magical boot itself, she was still a little under level 6000 from the prince's latest tussle from Baal, and even slacking off everyday had only let it decay a dozen levels or so - but it was still slobbering all over her, and that wasn't acceptable, so she gave it a whack with her other foot and snapped its neck. Standing up unevenly - she had a rather painful migraine - she tried to shake off as much slobber as she could before looking around her, spotting Laharl standing on top of an outcrapping of rock nearby. His scarf was fluttering in the opposite direction the wind was going, but Maximum Drama seemed to be one of Laharl's specialities, in more ways than one, so she ignored it.

She leapt up to the rock herself, almost slipping thanks to drool still coating her foot. "So, prince, ignoring the fact that you let a lizard munch on me for who knows how long..." and that was a blatant lie, she'd totally get him back for that, "any idea where we are? We certainly aren't on my island"

"_My_ island," Laharl said absently, causing a tic to form on her forehead, "and we're not on any island, as far as I can tell. Congratulations, Etna," he said with a smirk, "You've managed to transport us to some backwater, prehistoric human world where our only hope for getting back is the same incompetence that got us here. Way to go."

"I live to serve, prince," she grated out sarcastically. "What are minions for, if not to fill in for the incompetence of their master?"

"Indeed - hey!" Laharl shouted out, looking indignant. "I'm not the one who decided they could pick up interdimensional portal magic from bathroom scrawls!"

"And I'm not the one who crashed another person's vacation and peed on them, but you don't see me holding _that_ against you, do you!"

"Hmph," he scowled, looking away. "You're just biding your time."

Damn straight she was. "Anyway," she continued, not wanting him to think about that too hard - he might decide that a preemptive strike was his best option - "you said we're somewhere prehistoric?"

"That's right." Laharl let loose a sigh, looking irritated and slightly despondant. "Any idea how to get back?"

"Other than try the circle again? Not really."

There was a pause as he digested her words, before he sighed again. "Well, get to it, then. Can't be any worse than a place with no people, right?"

* * *

It was worse.

"AAAAAHHH!" Laharl screamed as he regained conciousness and did a self-check. "MY LEVEL'S GONE!"

"Ugh..." Etna woke up quickly, the prince's call reverberating inside her aching head. The last thing she remembered was the same dragon showing up, looking just as pissed as before, before another tsunami spontaneously appeared and swept them off who knows where. "What are you complaining about now, prince?"

"My level's gone! Gone!" To her surprise, Etna could hear him hyperventilating. Checking her own stats, she figured out why - her stats were _gone_. She'd been reduced to level 1 before, but this was worse - much worse. Only humans had no level - they had to go through special procedures to be able to gain levels. If they didn't, then no matter how hard they tried, they were stuck with their own body's power.

In other words, they were practically helpless.

Starting to hyperventilate herself, Etna tried to take stock of the situation. They were situated at the edge of a human city, in the middle of what appeared to be a massive desert. They were both still clothed, and she had her spear, but she could barely lift it - which meant her equipment wasn't giving her any stat boosts. Which was strange, as even a human shoud recieve the benefits of magical equipment, even the crappy ones. The items still existed, though, and her spear really shouldn't without any magical power - it was techinically made of strands of demonic hair or something, if magic didn't _exist_ it'd just fall apart. Which meant, hopefully, that they still _had_ their power, it just didn't function wherever they were.

Shed never heard of being able to go to a world which functioned on totally different rules before, but maybe it was because they'd done two disasterous dimensional jumps in a row. Maybe that dragon they'd summoned had held a grudge. Whatever, what to do next was clear. "Prince, I'm going to make another circle."

Laharl was starting to calm down himself, and nodded. "Right. This time, it really _can't _get any worse."

Debating the wisdom of whacking the prince over the head wth her spear, Etna decided it was more important to get to a place where she had levels first. If they were stuck at level 1 again, then maybe she could keep ahead of Laharl's level and be the dominant one, promise to King Krichevskoy be damned.

She finished drawing the circle and, lacking any creature to sacrifice, grabbed Laharl and slit his arm with the head of her spear, spilling blood all over the circle.

Nothing happened.

Starting to panic, she ignored Laharl's whining and slit her own arm, dropping even more blood onto the circle, still to no effect. Bad. This was bad. The circle should at least have been responding, if only to flicker and tell her she needed to sacrifice more, but to get _nothing_?

She began hyperventilating again.

"Etna? Etna!" Laharl called out, looking _scared_ of all things, something she'd never seen on the foolhardy brat's face before. Laharl was not only arrogant enough to believe he couldn't die, he'd faced Death in the face and demanded it to agree to his terms - fear was something she just didn't asociate with the idiot.

"It's not working," she breathed out, a little more high-pitched than she had intended, both her face and Laharl's turning white. "We're stuck."

And then they both fainted.

* * *

Right. New chapter to a new story. See Author profile for more information on my current status/what I've been doing.

This is an EtnaxLaharl fic, as people can probably guess. Far too few of these out there. I only got excited enough to write this after playing Disgaea Infinite, which sparked my interest in the characters. Having Laharl be a spoiled brat works much better than you think it would as a story hook.

It's also a Monster Hunter crossover. My primary experience with the series has been MH3, but I can and have read the wiki, so while my favorite weapons are definitely going to be the ones in MH3, I can totally use others as well. Same goes for monsters, although I'm more inclined to make my own.

To sum up the ending: They're stuck and not going anywhere soon. Also, they have no levels; levels seem to be a mechanic that the disgaea characters are well aware of, and as the only humans you go around butchering are the heroes/military, it stands to reason that normal humans would be, well, normal. The 'process' I mentioned doesn't have to be technological nor necessarily complex, just probably dangerous to some degree. It's also not going to be expounded on unless i have a good reason.

The 100x speed of human world is something that is canon, according to Disgaea Infinite; it certainly clears up some of the issues that the ages of the demons and angels have caused. Basically, while in human years Laharl is 1316 years old (as of Disgaea 2), in the **amount of time he's ****experienced** he's 13.16 years old. So he's really only 13 - his birth was just a much longer time ago according to human calendars. Note that it is also mentioned that time works like clockwork in Celestia, but in the Netherworld clocks, and by extension time, are pretty much wonky; this sounds like something that was put in for humor, as a constant like time being treated as a variable throws all sorts of wrenches into the works.

Hope people are interested in this. It's not gonna be WAFFy, but it'll still have LaharlxEtna in it. I might upgrade it to M and do a lemon if I feel it helps the story, but probably not.


End file.
